It's Called Stalling
by Son of Zeus0001
Summary: When the White Council gets word that there might be some mysterious warlocks running around London, they send their elite team of experienced and finely trained wardens to deal with it. Or... they send out the unruly youngsters so the old folks can have their poker night. Take your pick. Rating is purely for occasional language and a little bit of not too graphic violence.


**Author's Note:** Hi all! This is a complete humor fic. There is literally no other reason for it. It's a one shot, so I regret to inform you that it will not be continued. However, I do hope you enjoy what's there. The idea behind the story is that the White Council's contacts in the British Government noticed some discrepancies in records, and the Paranet has been complaining about seeing some shady looking wizard types running around London. It takes place some time after White Night, probably later that same year. But, it works for pretty much any time between that and Changes. So... yeah, that about sums it up. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Dresden Files or Harry Potter.

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"Don't even joke about that man. I've known her since she was in pig-tails."

"You were the one com –"

"Hey!" Harry Dresden backpedaled hurriedly. "I'm just saying. I've seen plenty of things with my sight. Most of the time they give me nightmares. And, the first time she does it, well…" he gestured vaguely with his right hand. Suddenly his shoulders slumped and the wizard seemed to deflate. "It's so not fair…"

Ramirez snorted, grinning at the older man.

"Whatever, virgin," Harry smirked.

Carlos Ramirez scowled good naturedly and turned back to look at their target. "So, what do you think?"

Harry shrugged, adjusting his grip on his staff and turning to look at the row of houses in front of them. "It's hard to say. There's definitely wards up though…" He frowned. "Morgan's paranoid, I mean like Batman and the CIA had an illegal love-child paranoid… but I don't think he's wrong." He grunted, "This time." He paused for another moment, observing the street for any signs of obvious weirdness. "The only thing out of place is the missing house," he muttered.

"Whadya mean Harry?" Meyers drawled from his left.

Harry grunted and gestured towards the offending houses. "Eleven and Thirteen. They're missing twelve. It's sloppy. No self-respecting Architect would make that mistake."

"Hmm," Meyers frowned at the two houses. "Whadya suggest?"

Harry blinked several times. The title of "Regional Commander" was still weird. True, Ramirez also held that title, and this was the council's "elite strike force." Or, in slightly more accurate terms: The guys who got in the most trouble and least liked being mushrooms. Or, if he wanted to be really cynical: The young guys that could be ordered out so the senior wardens could have their poker night.

"We wait…" He suppressed a grin at the incredulous looks sent in his direction. Before either could object, or decapitate him as an imposter, he raised his hands in protest. "Hey! We don't have any information at this point. I like to have at least a general idea of what's going on before I start blowing up a building."

The other two nodded, accepting his answer reluctantly.

The three waited in silence as the minutes stretched on. Harry had sent wardens Yoshimo and Kowalski out to scout the block with Molly. Apart from Ramirez, they were by far the best at veils, and sneaking around in general. NBA league height did not make for good sneaking through the streets of London. Neither did the ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots that Meyers refused to take off.

It wasn't until about two hours later, after they had sent Ramirez out to get some food and beer at the nearest suitable place he could find and he'd returned laden down with burgers and – of all things – some of Mac's best, that they got enough information for Harry to start blowing stuff up.

"Where'd you get this stuff, Carlos?"

Carlos gave them a mock-offended look. "What? You think a true magician is gonna reveal his secrets? Especially when their as awesome as mine?"

"Point," Harry chuckled as he opened one of the beers and began to drink.

"Guys…"

"Yeah Bill, what's the…" Harry trailed off, spilling some of the beer down his front as twenty-four people on broomsticks – honest to god flying broomsticks! – landed on the street.

"That's not normal… I mean, even for us, that's not normal," Ramirez said.

"Agreed," Harry sighed. "Time to start blowing stuff up. Meyers, go find the others. We might need them in a minute. Ramirez, you're with me." The other two nodded and they started for the group, Meyers pealing off to the side in hopes of finding the others.

"Just like the vampires?" Ramirez asked.

"Just like the vampires," Harry confirmed, striking his staff on the ground and sending a rippling wave of fire flowing over the street in front of them. As they neared, the fire fading away before them, all eyes were on them. "Right! What's going on here?"

A tall, ancient-looking man wearing half-moon spectacles turned towards them. "I'm sorry," the man said eyeing them warily. His eyes twinkled in a way that Harry was sure was both unnatural and very unhealthy. "How may we help you young man?"

Harry grimaced and put on his best movie-detective voice. "Well, you see Mac, our office got a call from our boss about some records in the government being all wonky." Harry pinned the man with a stare, doing his best to act like any of the detectives from those old black-and-white movies. "You fine gentleman wouldn't happen to know about that would you? Kids vanishin' at the age of eleven? Boardin' schools that don't exist? You know, the weird stuff?"

The reaction was immediate… and not entirely unexpected. He had that way with people. It was his undeniable personable charm. Even before he could finish talking, four wands were pointing at him and four voices were shouting gibberish. About a second after he'd completed his questioning, four jets of red light impacted against his coat and he was hurled backwards off his feet.

"Ow!" he growled and looked up to see Ramirez holding up that weird water shield between them and the group of people wearing dresses and holding brooms.

"You okay Harry?"

"Yeah," He grunted, pushing himself to his feet. "The enchantments on the duster got most of it I think. Stings like hell though." He winced, noticing the awed faces on most of the people held at bay behind the shield.

"Wandless! Dumbledore, he's doing that completely wandless!"

"Impossible, Mrs. Weasly. No wizard can work magic like that wandlessly!" A bushy-haired girl in her mid teens proclaimed snobbishly. Or, at least Harry thought it was snobbishly. She had a British accent, so it was hard for him to tell.

"Egad Homes!" Harry proclaimed, summoning a ball of fire above one hand. "Right. So, here's how we're gonna do this. We'll drop the shield after you put away your wands, and we'll talk this out like civilized folk. That work for everyone?"

"Bloody hell!" A red-haired teen blurted, his eyes fixed on the fireball about a foot above Harry's outstretched hand. _Maybe he was related to the other red-heads in the group_, Harry mused. Though… from what he saw of how many there were, it suggested a truly disturbing level of in-breeding. That, or people with that color red hair were _way_ more common than Harry had originally thought.

"Language, Ronald!" the brown-haired girl scolded, slugging him in the arm.

"Do we have a deal?" Harry asked warily, watching several of the adults making eye-contact and nodding to each other.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the grey-bearded, twinkly-eyed man stepped forward. "Very well," he sighed. "Lower your shield and we shall discuss what comes next."

Dresden nodded slowly, watching the man carefully before gesturing for Ramirez to lower the shield. "So," he said as the shield lowered. "Who knows why those records are so messed up?"

"_Relashio!_" A man who looked something like a mix between road kill and a steam punk wet dream shouted, raising his wand and pointing it at Ramirez. As the words left his lips, a surge of magic flowed out from him, and ropes shot forward from his wand, ensnaring Ramirez and slowly winding their way around him. Harry was sure it would cause a number of extremely painful rope burns. But, the ropes avoided his friends face. The extremely strange thought that Butcher's book contract was safe ran through his mind, but he shook it off as the realization that they'd just been double-crossed sank in.

"You jerk!" He shouted, charging forward through the crowd and ramming his elbow into the man's half-nose."Besides, that's worse Latin than mine," he grinned as the man stumbled backwards. He spun, releasing a surge of magic in the direction of twinkly-eyes with a roar of "Fozare!"

The strike hit home, but not before the twinkly-eyed old bastard had managed to raise some sort of shield around himself with a flick of his wand. Even so, he was sent sliding backward across the pavement a number of feet.

He spun again, ready to send another blast of force in the direction of the crowd, but tripped as something slithered up and around his leg. Glancing down hurriedly, he saw that it was another set of conjured ropes, already tangling its way around his arms and torso. He swore under his breath. He was no light-weight wen it came to magic, but delicate work was not his thing. If he tried to escape the ropes, he was as likely to blow off his own hand in the process.

"Damn it," he swore as the twinkly eyed man ordered several of the others to place him next to Ramierez, and they did. it was uncomfortable, being carried by people who couldn't get a good enough grip to keep his head from banging against the pavement of the street several times. That, or they were just dragging him and didn't like him. One of the two.

"The Statute of Secrecy, Albus!" one of the younger members of the group moaned. "The Ministry is going to crucify us."

"I'm afraid," the old man – Dumpledorf, Harry thought he'd heard one of the red-headed adults call him – sighed regretfully, "that we have little choice in the matter. Mad-Eye," he said, turning to the walking steam punk wet dream whom Harry had elbowed in the nose about two minutes earlier. Or, more accurately, half-nose. "Please see to it that their memories are erased, and that they make it home safely."

The man nodded and flicked his wand.

"Right," Harry sighed, resigning himself to the weirdness that was his life. "Memory modification. That's all we needed. Hey Carlos?"

"Yeah, Harry?" the younger Warden grunted, adjusting his position as best he could while still tied up.

"Blow him up."

The eyebrows of the grey-bearded man in half-moon spectacles rose to the middle of his forehead where, Harry presumed, they would have disappeared beneath his hairline in his younger years. Around them, the others in the street looked either alarmed or amused, with no particular defining feature to help distinguish who belonged to which group. One man in particular, a hook-nosed, greasy-haired guy in dark robes, sneered. "Wipe their memories Mad-Eye, and lets get back –"

"Hey!" Dresden shouted, cutting the man off and drawing all eyes to him.

When the leather-duster-wearing wizard didn't say anything else, the hook-nosed git – they were in England after all – growled. "What?"

"Huh?" Dresden frowned, looking at the guy confusedly.

He suppressed a grin at the sound of the man's grinding teeth. "You were –"

"Oh!" Harry crowed, interrupting the man again. "Yeah, that. That was just to keep with the whole good-guy bad-guy thing we've got going on here. You see, you try to make threats, and we ignore them and insult you. That's how it works," he explained as if teaching a particularly slow child what two plus two was. "And you," he said, turning towards Dumbledorf. "What's with the damn twinkly eyes? It's creepy as hell."

The grey-bearded Dumbledorf frowned at him in concern, his eyes twinkling even more.

"Damn it! Stop that!"

Ramirez snorted again as Harry elbowed him surreptitiously in the back.

"Where's my explosion, man? Tell me you brought the grenades," Harry chuckled, trying not to sound nervous.

"Sorry, Harry. Molly has 'em. I figured she'd need them more than we did."

"Come on," Harry sighed, resting his head against his knees. "You're not giving me anything to work with here Carlos. You might lose your dinosaur privileges if you keep this up."

"That really hurts Harry," Ramirez said, doing his best to look wounded. "You get the hot apprentice. You save the world multiple times. And now you won't let me ride on your Dinosaur? That hurts. Even through my awesomeness, that hurts."

"Yeah, whatever. It's not like I'm making you and your awesomeness look bad."

Ramirez let out an amused little chuckle. "Next to you, Harry, everyone looks bad."

"That's not true," Harry said firmly. "I mean, just look at Ebenezer. The guy's got awesome oozing out of every bald spot."

"Yeah, but he didn't raise a dinosaur from the dead and ride it through Chicago."

"True," Harry said. "But still, I had some help. Butters was instrumental to that whole thing…" He trailed off, noticing the horrified looks on the faces surrounding them. "What?" He grinned up at them. "You never see anyone use necromancy on a dinosaur before?"

"No one's seen someone use necromancy on a dinosaur before, Harry," Ramirez mock-chided. "Besides, you're probably the only one who'd be stupid enough to actually try getting it past the council."

"True," Dresden sighed regretfully. "But, still, necessary evils and all that. Where would we be if I hadn't?"

"Very true," Ramirez grinned.

"_ENOUGH!_," the hook-nosed man snarled. "They're obviously dark wizards Mad-Eye. Kill them and get it -"

A young man in a grey cloak materialized directly behind Dumbledorf, holding a silver sword to the back of his neck. "Right," the dark-haired young man grinned. "Everyone drop your… er, wands?" He shook his head. "Whatever. Everyone drop your weapons or Darth Gandalf here loses his head."

"It's called stalling," Dresden told the grey-bearded, twinkly-eyed man in a confiding tone as the others appeared from under their veils. "It's really useful when you've got backup hanging around." He glanced confusedly at the dark-haired young man. "Darth Gandalf? Really, Kowalski? That's the best you could come up with? You've had like… seven minutes!"

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**Author's Note: **Thoughts?


End file.
